Community college administrations overlap

Richard Raasueld studies at Copper Mountain College in Joshua Tree.The district broke from the Desert Community College District in 1999. The region’s two districts, with one college each, are among the state’s smallest.
Carlos Puma/California Watch

Richard Raasueld studies at Copper Mountain College in Joshua Tree.The district broke from the Desert Community College District in 1999. The region’s two districts, with one college each, are among the state’s smallest.

In 1999, the bill became law. Almost overnight, the region went from having one college and one district to two colleges and two districts.

With the new designation came new trappings. The district created two new jobs that mirrored positions at Palm Desert’s College of the Desert: a chief human resources officer and a chief business officer. Copper Mountain also hired a director of fiscal services, promoted the provost to CEO and promoted a professor to a position as chief instructional officer. A new local board was elected. State budgets provided $3 million in the first two years to foot the bill for the transition.

From 1998, before the secession, to 2002, four years after the split, the cost of top-level administration for College of the Desert and Copper Mountain College doubled, growing at twice the rate of the system as a whole. Copper Mountain currently has nine administrators and faculty who make more than $100,000 per year.

Both districts are among California’s smallest. The Desert Community College District enrolls roughly 13,000 students. Copper Mountain, the spinoff, is the second-tiniest district in the state, with 3,000 students enrolled last year.

Tiny districts are, by nature, inefficient. In fact, their fixed costs are so high that the state funding formula adds on extra money for them. As a result, per-student funding at Copper Mountain in 2010 was about $8,200 – more than 40 percent higher than the state average of $5,700.

“They’ve got to have a board, they’ve got to have a basic campus, they’ve got to have a basic administration, they’ve got to have a basic faculty even if their class size is very small,” Wolf said. “So why would you create something like this … when there’s 55 miles away a great big campus that provides everything?”

Gillick did not dispute that forming a new small district entailed significant costs. But he said consolidating Copper Mountain with a neighboring district would be an “unsuccessful implant.”

“These small things (districts) are costly, but they have a value that can’t be measured in bucks,” he said.

Brulte, now the California Republican Party chairman, said there was no requirement in the law that the new district add more administrators. The move had a positive impact in the area, he said.

“At the end of the day, additional resources went to Copper Mountain, and it eliminated a tremendous source of conflict within the Morongo Basin,” he said. “The people of the Morongo Basin got to have control of the college district in their community.”

California Watch reporter Kendall Taggart contributed to this story. California Watch is part of the independent, nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting and a media partner of U-T San Diego. The reporters can be reached at eperez@cironline.org and aarmendariz@cironline.org.